Uncharted Territory
by Mala
Summary: Set around five episodes into Season 2...Beka overanalyzes the Tyr situation. Nothing like a little non-relationship angst to ruin a perfect night.


His voice, a low rumble, makes your knees knock together. That's why you're glad to be in your chair on the Maru or stationary behind Andromeda's command console most of the time. You have something to hold onto. You don't have to depend on your weak legs to hold you up. You can maintain the trademark Valentine finesse and pretend nothing gets to you except the thrill of the chase...the rush of Slipstream.  
  
When he looks at you, it's as if he looks straight through you. You know he does it to everyone else on board, too--even the AI drones--and you wonder if they all get the crazy sensation of jumping out of their skin and crawling into his...or if that's just you. You think it's just you...although if Dylan swung that way....well, it'd be another story.   
  
You're all his pride. You know that. It's as if he owns you...or you all own him. That sense of pack, of protection, of family. When you or Dylan or Harper or Trance are in danger, he puts aside that genetic instinct to serve himself first...and you've seen him rip creatures limb from limb with his bare hands just to keep you safe. And he'd even put himself out for Rev...just because he knows how much Rev means to you.   
  
Not that he'll admit that. He is Nietschean, after all. He'd rather eat your entire bootleg music library than admit he could care for anyone. Especially a motley assortment of human and alien cast-offs. But he took you by the shoulders and shook you when you were hopped up on Flash, earlier this year, and it wasn't just scorn in his eyes but concern and fear, too. He prowled around Hawkins like an angry male lion... and when you joked about Nietscheans marking their territory...the curiosity in Leydon's eyes made you stare up at some gorgeous little flower in the garden and kick yourself for using such a telling word. 'Territory.' Since when are you Tyr Anasazi's territory?   
  
He makes an effort, now, to keep a few inches between you. To make sure he's not 'too close.' And, yet, you've seen him tense and coil when you kiss another man. There was Hawkins, of course. You remember crying as you stared out into space...that aching feeling of belonging to somebody for just a short while...and, moreover, you remember that Leydon Hawkins, one of the greatest, best looking, thieves in the known universe, wasn't the somebody you were really meant to be with. So, you let him go. You let it go.   
  
But that's not the end of it. Not the end of the thrumming tension. You thought Tyr was going to tear Dylan's head off when you passed him the Heart under the cover of a casual smooch. You can't kiss men you could care for because it always works out badly...and, apparently, you can't kiss men who are your friends because it ticks off big, hulking, muscle-bound Nietscheans who won't even mate with someone not in the same species. It's Tyr's own fault. His own screwed up sense of honor and loyalty and heritage. But, despite his own rules, he had a stark expression of "Why Captain Hunt and not ME?" on his face after you moved aside.   
  
He has that expression on his face a lot. And you have to wonder if you make *his* legs weak beneath all that tight leather. Do you see right through *him*? Do you affect him at all? Is that what makes him so damn overprotective and overbearing and omnipresent? Is that why he's so terrified to even accidentally brush your hand as you pass each other on deck?   
  
Is that why you're both alone?   
  
Because you might not be able to stand at all if you were together?   
  
Because you might just spend every waking moment fighting and fucking and loving and forgetting things like duty and genes and the Commonwealth? Because you would want to bury yourselves in each other's souls and twist around and never leave your bed? Because you would bare your hearts to each other and die for each other and give up your hard-won independence?   
  
Sometimes, you just want to reach out and grab his hand...measure your fingers against his and have his large palm swallow you up. You want to jump the boundaries he's imposed...kick down the fence...shake him like he shook you. "Put up or shut up, Anasazi. Either you want me, or you don't."   
  
But you don't do it. You don't rock the boat...or the ship. You let him play the game the way he wants. You let him piss a circle around you so no one else can get to you...and you go to your quarters every night by yourself.   
  
And it's starting to break you.   
  
You're sick of getting yourself off to fantasies of his long hair trailing across your skin as he uses that silken mouth for something besides scathing criticism and two line proverbs. You're sick of stumbling every time he says your name because you're that susceptible to, and hungry for, his charms. You're sick of feeling his intense, dark eyes stripping you naked...while the rest of him refuses to follow through. You're sick of being lonely when you don't have to be. When the chance to have your beefcake and fuck it, too, is just a few feet away at any given moment.   
  
Most of all, you're sick of your knees knocking...of the hollow clicking noise that only you seem to be able to hear.   
  
God forbid Tyr fall for an inferior creature like you.   
  
God damn, but you've all ready fallen in love with the likes of him.   
  
--end--  
  
October 27, 2001.   
  



End file.
